Martha Ruske, MFT
Recovery Life Coaching
About
About Intentional Path
I started Intentional Path as a service for people in longer-term recovery because I think it’s an area that has been neglected.
I’ve relied on a lot of help from others over the years – therapists, coaches, personal trainers, workshops, classes. Early in my recovery I sought out people who were knowledgeable in addiction. Later on I didn’t, and I realized that the subject of addiction rarely came up. For other people, recovery might be very central for them. They might stay surrounded by other people in recovery and filter their life views through the lens of addiction.
I wondered about a middle ground. Of the issues that people in recovery face 10 or 20 years in, how many are personal growth issues that anyone would have? How many are due to being in recovery?
There is a big variety in the way people get and stay sober. There is no one way to do it, and no recovery is perfect. I have come to believe that past addiction and recovery are always relevant, no matter how many years of sobriety one has, but not necessarily central at any given time. The quality of our recovery is like a touchstone for the quality of other areas of our lives. Recovery is one of the most significant things we have ever done, and to ignore it is to dismiss a strong source of strength.
I dedicate this site to my Great Uncle Walter. He is the only one I know of in our family who ever got sober, besides me. I have no idea what his recovery was like, but I like to think of him paving the way for generational healing. I’m grateful to him.
Martha Ruske
Education & Training: Martha studied coaching with MentorCoach (mentorcoach.com) and has a certificate of Life Coaching from JFK University. She is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California (#MFC29701) and has a MA in Psychology from JFK University. She is a member of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, Coachville, and Recovery Coaches International (RCI).
She also has a MS in Library Science from Wayne State University. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Michigan State University and has an AA degree from the American College in Paris. She studied French at the University of Dijon after high school.
Work & Life Experience: Martha has been coaching since 2001. She worked as a psychotherapist from 1984 to 1992, doing both short-term counseling in a treatment center and long-term psychodynamic therapy in private practice. She was a business librarian/knowledge consultant for 25 years for major companies in the areas of banking, telecommunications, consulting, and accounting, as well as a library director. (She still enjoys substituting from time to time at the reference desk of the public library.) She worked “au pair” in Paris for 2 years.
Martha lives in Marin County, California, with her husband and 13-year-old son Alec. She has lived a life of sobriety for over 24 years.
“I don’t tell people what to do, Yukiko. I ask them who they are”
Kenji in Blackberries in the Dream House, by Diane Frank.